Passengers Escape Heathrow Plane Crash

Passengers had a near miraculous escape today when their international flight crash-landed short of the runway at Heathrow Airport.

Passengers escaped down the emergency chutes after British Airways flight BA38 from Beijing came down.

Six ambulances were sent to the scene and three people were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

The alert delayed the departure of Prime Minister Gordon Brown who was due to leave Heathrow for China and India.

Heathrow, the world's busiest airport was disrupted for a time as the south runway was closed while investigators examine the scene, although the north runway remains open.

"On its approach it took the runway too low, just missing the roof of my cab," said eyewitness John Rowland.

"The plane's wheels collapsed, doors were flown open. It crashed into the runway, debris was flying everywhere, there was an enormous bang and it skidded sideways."

Another eyewitness said: "We were taxiing along ready to take off and out of the window I could see a plane coming in to land.

"I'm not quite sure if the under carriage was missing or not, but certainly what we saw was the plane coming down.

"There were some sparks as the undercarriage or the bottom of the plane actually touched the runway - certainly a huge amount of smoke coming up from that.

"And then the plane did come to a halt reasonably quickly.

"It was incredibly efficient the speed that people got off the aircraft.

"I could see that the chutes were deployed very quickly and people were coming down on that.

"Then people were sent off to the nearby buildings which are probably only about 200 yards away from the plane.

"There were about six fire engines there," he continued. "There seems to have been regular dousing of foam on the port engine which obviously - probably - was the hottest one where the plane landed.

"Certainly there is a lot of activity and lots of vehicles with flashing lights all around the plane."

(BMcC)